Our secular calendar’s beginning its New Year on January 1st makes difficult our remembering that the new Church Year begins December 1st with the First Sunday of Advent. Likewise, our culture’s or at least its advertisers’ selling Christmas even before Halloween makes difficult our remembering that Advent is a season unto itself that opens that new Church Year! Yet, we do well to remember such things, as the Church has for centuries.
You may know that every Church Year is made up of two halves. The first half focuses more on the Jesus’s birth in a manger, death on the cross, and resurrection from the grave in order to save us from our sins, and the second half focuses more on His teaching and deeds as the Holy Spirit uses them in order to grow the Church. The first half is itself made up of five seasons, the first season of which is Advent. (The seasons of Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, and Easter are the other four.) The English word “Advent” derives from the Latin verb that means “come to”.
Advent is a penitential season of preparation that precedes the celebration of The Nativity of Our Lord, Christmas, just as the more severely penitential season of Lent precedes the celebration of the Resurrection of Our Lord, Easter. We do not prepare for the Lord’s coming at His birth, for that happened more than 2,000 years ago, but we prepare for the commemoration of that historic event. And, that past coming is at least part of the basis for and a picture of both our Lord’s present coming to us in His Kingdom of Grace, the Church, and His future coming in Glory, to judge the living and the dead.
Our Advent hymns, Scripture Readings, and the like present those three “comings”—past, present, and future—in an almost bewildering fashion. The same sentence might present one, two, or all three “comings” without order or distinction. Yet, our remembering His past coming serves our preparing for and recognizing both His present coming and His future coming. Although we do not prepare or pray for the past event, as the patriarchs and prophets did, we can still speak their words, as they apply to His coming now and in the future. And we know that our expectations are and will be fulfilled, as their expectations were fulfilled.
For the season of Advent (and for Advent alone), the colored cloths (paraments) that adorn the furniture in the church (the chancel furnishings) are blue. Blue is a color of hope and expectation, often associated with the Virgin Mary and her festivals, but as we use it the color is also associated with penitence, yet distinct from the deeper color purple, which is used during Lent (and during Lent alone here at Pilgrim, though some congregations use purple for both penitential seasons).
The liturgical and calendar dates for the Sundays this Advent, along with descriptions and citations of their appointed Gospel Readings, follow below (according to Lutheran Service Book’s 3 year Series A, which you might note draws primarily from the Holy Gospel according to St. Matthew).
- First Sunday in Advent (12/01): Jesus enters Jerusalem in triumph
(Matthew 21:1-11) - Second Sunday in Advent (12/08): Jesus is proclaimed by John the Baptizer
(Matthew 3:1-12) - Third Sunday in Advent (12/15): Jesus points to His fulfillment of Holy Scripture
(Matthew 11:2-15) - Fourth Sunday of the Church Year (12/22): Jesus’s birth is announced to Joseph
(Matthew 1:18-25)
Every Sunday this Advent (and all of the Sundays of the 2013-2014 Church Year) Pilgrim is offering a full Divine Service with the Sacrament of the Altar. We are following the liturgy of Lutheran Service Book’s Divine Service, Setting One (essentially the same liturgy that the congregation used for years as Lutheran Worship’s Divine Service II, First Setting).
As was our custom the previous two years, we are again offering Midweek Advent Vespers services on Wednesday nights at 7:00 p.m., though this year we will use the Order of Vespers in Lutheran Service Book. Because of where Christmas falls in the week, we again have only three midweek services this year, and our focus in them will be on the fulfillment of the Prophecies of Jesus’s Birth as follows.
- Advent I (12/04): Seed of a Virgin
(Genesis 3:1-24; Galatians 4:4-9; Matthew 1:18-25) - Advent II (12/11): Line of Descent
(Genesis 49:8-12; Jeremiah 23:1-8; Acts 13:13-43) - Advent III (12/18): Place of Birth
(Micah 4:1-5:15; Luke 2:1-7; John 7:14-44)
Our Midweek Advent Vespers services are each preceded by a congregational meal at 6:00 p.m. and a Festival Choir practice at 6:30 p.m. All are invited to eat, sing, and worship!
You may read and hear sermons preached at Pilgrim during Advent and any other time of the Church Year here.
The banner image at the top of this page includes a portion of Pilgrim’s Advent Lectern parament. The monogram “IHS” is not a typo for “HIS” but represents the initial two and final letters of the Greek name “Jesus”, originally used to save space in manuscripts of the New Testament. The monogram sometimes is also read as an initialism of the three Greek words meaning “Jesus, Son, Savior”.
